Some controversy has arisen since President Moon Jae-in publicly encouraged greater study of the ancient civilization of Gaya and nominated a particular National Assemblyman for a cabinet position. President Moon vowed to do things differently from his disgraced predecessor, but both of these steps seem mostly to have continued a disturbing pattern.

That pattern has been government intervention in historical scholarship, or more generally the politicization of history. State sponsorship of historical study is not always a bad thing: When, in the previous decade, the government established a commission to document the hidden atrocities of the Korean War, for example, it overturned a longstanding cover-up from the dictatorship period. Several years earlier, another government decision, to let competing private publishers write history textbooks instead of authorizing only a single official version, further enhanced the spirit of openness following democratization.

This explains why President Park Geun-hye's interventions were so distressing. First, she tried to re-nationalize high school history textbooks, over the outcry from almost all professional historians, in a transparent effort to resuscitate the historical reputation of her father, Park Chung-Hee, the former president and dictator. This was one of several moves by her administration, including the rushed agreement with the Japanese government regarding the comfort women issue, that aimed to break down what was considered a heavy-handed, leftist historical orthodoxy.

But regardless of whether historical understanding is dominated by progressives, both left and right views, at least among the general public, are undeniably nationalistic. Politicians and other non-historians readily turn to ethnic appeals over history, especially in order to mobilize supporters in defense of historical claims against Japan and/or China.

Thus President Moon's nomination, and now appointment, of Do Jong-hwan as his Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism is troubling. As a legislator Do fought against the re-nationalization of textbooks, but he also called for rejecting major research projects that he deemed insufficiently one-sided, as if somehow he, once a famed poet, knew better than groups of trained historians. And throughout, his intervention came in defense of nationalist fantasies about ancient history that betrayed not only ignorance but an appeal, once again, to tribalism.

Speaking of tribes, that's what Gaya was, a confederation of tribes, and probably little more than that, at least in terms of political character or identity. It was neither "Korean" nor "Japanese," as it was absorbed by neighboring Silla before there was a Korea or Japan. So to engage in this back-and-forth with Japanese historical distortions from the early 20th century, which by now are nothing more than a convenient bogeyman, is frankly silly.

But equally absurd is the widespread acceptance of the legend, spread by the education system including even universities, that Korean history originated nearly 5,000 years ago, and through a supernatural event at that. The Japanese and Chinese have promoted similar national myths. The claim that Gaya was actually the ancient Japanese colony of Mimana, for example, served to legitimate Japan's colonial rule over Korea in the early 20th century.

And so it's easy to see how this situation can produce ongoing tensions over who, in terms of the modern nation states of Korea or Japan or China, ruled whom and controlled which territory thousands of years ago. This sensitivity flared up again last month when apparently the Chinese president told his American counterpart that Korea was once a part of China.

When will this stop? Even opinion pages for sensible press outlets like The Korea Times have promoted this nationalistic fervor, accusing Do's critics of being "pro-Japanese." More sober observers, including professional historians, had hoped that the new South Korean president would be more reasonably dispassionate. But he seems to have escalated the situation.

It is not as if there is a lack of scholarly or popular interest in Gaya already. There is in fact a major Gaya museum in Goryeong, a university museum in Daegu, and a national museum and Gaya Theme Park in Gimhae, the supposed capital of historical Gaya.

Gimhae, though, is also the home town of former president Roh Moo-hyun, a close friend of President Moon, who is from neighboring Busan. So despite Moon's publicly avowed intent of only encouraging more research and attention for the sake of greater harmony between provincial regions, this seems more like a political move, sadly.

Furthermore, given that the historical figure most attached to Gaya, Gim Yusin, played the leading role in Silla's conquest of other kingdoms on the peninsula back in the seventh century, the glorification of Gaya has the potential of actually worsening regional rivalries.

Such unintended consequences are always a danger when politicians and officials try to politicize historical understanding. If Koreans can use Gaya to make a territorial claim based in the ancient era, for example, they should be prepared to accept Chinese claims over the Pyongyang area.

The other major problem is that such politicization of history tends to ignore or manipulate the work of trained professionals, about which I have written before in this column. My expression of concern is not merely one of self-defense, but also a voice of alarm at the disregard for verifiable facts and grounded expertise in order to pursue tribal politics, a component of the runaway nationalism that we see around the world today.

Kyung Moon Hwang is a professor at the Department of History, University of Southern California. He is the author of "A History of Korea ― An Episodic Narrative" (Second edition, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).